What-eva?!!

Ever wondered what is the most irritating answer you might get from someone? Check out this video!

Thanks Jon for sending me this link! LOL

Of Guitars and Practice - Part 1

Last Sunday was an extremely fun day for me, went to church in the morning, headed to Ikano for brunch, shopped a little bit at Ikea and finally relaxed with a nice cup of coffee at The Curve. That took up the entire morning and afternoon and I decided I wanted to do something which I have been too lazy to do for a long while, restring my three of my guitars at home.

What's the scope of this action?

1. Electric guitar - Les Paul Gibson Studio Gem
2. Acoustic guitar - Talman Inter City
   
3. Classical guitar - Yamaha CG100

To be honest, the very thought of that made me want to procrastinate as I knew it would take quite a bit of time because I am definitely not good at restringing guitars. So I thought, why not give it a go and to do that I needed to gear up.

Heading straight to 1 Utama, I remembered seeing certain items at the Guitar Collection I could get to help me. So into the shop I went and picked up the following items.

1) A set of Elixir strings, I bought a medium set.

2) A set of D'Addario Pro Arte strings (EJ45C - Normal Tension Silverplated Wound Clear Nylon)


3) A Planet Waves Pro winder - definitely a must have to improve stringing efficiency! This is definitely a God send, the time it took me to restring two strings on my Les Paul, I took the same amount of time to restring the remaining 4 strings on the Les Paul and my acoustic guitar as well!






4) A Planet Waves Lemon Oil - something to clean my fret board with to sustain the wood on the fret.









In total, the entire cost came up to about RM160+ with the strings alone costing more than RM100. To me it is an investment since the last time I changed the strings on my classical guitar was more than 10 years ago and the last time I took my old acoustic guitar out of the case ever since it flew in from Sheffield was 2 years ago, I guessed I have procrastinated long enough.

To be continued.......

These cards tell a certain story

As the title says, these 4 pictures tell a certain story of whats been going on recently and it has been a rather interesting journey for me.

First Image: Dropping a bomb maybe?

Second Image: A head on collision, with destiny?

Third Image: Should I change my mind?

Fourth Image: Definitely not, its time to game on!

Makes no sense at all? Oh well, who says life is not complicated?

Disclaimer: I did not take any of these pictures nor made them, I just scanned some copies of postcards

Early Morning Frustrations

Just when I thought that losing 5 games in a row at badminton on Tuesday night was frustrating enough, watching Liverpool play AC Milan was much worse. Why? Because I sacrificed sleep to watch the match in the wee hours of the morning only to be welcomed by a disappointing and lackluster performance by Liverpool.

I could say that Liverpool seemed to look like the better side with more shots at goal but their accuracy was a totally different subject. Wasted efforts and wide shots seemed to be the life long mission for Liverpool's players.

Without the emergence of a black sheep that is Steven Gerrard within the ranks of the Liverpool team, the team seemed lost and mistake after mistake emerged as they try to bring the ball past Dida. Zenden should have been removed earlier as I thought he played horrendously while Gerrard was pretty much quiet most of the time.

I can only rant and rant about this team but if Benitez does not do anything about Liverpool and their players (I am hoping that the new owners are willing to spend on quality players), we can only see Liverpool fighting for a 3rd spot again next season as Man Utd and Chelsea continue to rampage the Premier League.

On another note, I read an article on the web that Proton Dealers are having a tough time because apparently the implementation of the National Automotive Policy early last year, in addition to the tightening of hire purchase loan approvals by Bank Negara, had further affected sales.

My take is that we are moving towards a globalism and fighting on near-fair grounds against competing car makers, Proton falls extremely short in almost every segment except for price here in Malaysia. But that has already been shot at by the emergence of Perodua.

To no end will we see the decline for Proton Dealers unless Proton itself starts to bolster its already sorry line-up of cars and start to manufacture quality cars to compete in an ever competitive market.

Life is Beautiful

Indeed this song has been playing non-stop on my iPod thanks to Aunty Ooi for introducing this song to me. The lyrics just speak right straight to me, "Life is beautiful, but its complicated. We barely make it, we don't need to understand it, there are miracles". It just boggles the mind that such a simple statement can make complicated and stressful things disappear. Well not entirely disappear but you feel less stressed about it. Either that or I am just living in a dream world right now.



Life is Beautiful - Vega4

Life is beautiful
We live until we die

When you run into my arms
We steal a perfect moment
Let the monsters see you smile
Let them see you smiling

Do I hold you too tightly?
When will the hurt kick in?

Life is beautiful
But it's complicated
We barely make it
We don't need
To understand
There are miracles
Miracles

Yeah, life is beautiful
Our hearts
They beat and break

When you run away from harm
Will you run back into my arms?
Like you did when you were young
Will you come back to me?

And I will hold you tightly
When the hurting kicks in

Life is beautiful
But it's complicated
We barely make it
We don't need
To understand
There are miracles
Miracles

Stand
Where you are
We let all these moments
Pass us by

It's amazing where I'm standing
There's a lot that we can give
This is ours just for the moment
There's a lot that we can can give

It's amazing where I'm standing
There's a lot that we can give
This is ours just for the moment
There's a lot that we can give

Looking Forward

Quick update:
Do my eyes deceive me? Is Dell offloading their 30" LCD Monitor for a measly RM3,999? Wow, absolutely amazing. Check it out here.

Ever had that time and feeling whereby your mind seems to be inter twined in between both space and time? The feeling of hopelessness mixed with fear and anxiety wandering about in darkness only to see a ray of hope in the horizon, beaming through and cutting through the very shadow that enshrouds our vision?

I wondered why I felt lost, maybe it was because I watched all of the episodes of Lost season 3 over the last couple of days. Made me even more confused because someone told me that season 3 would be the last season and the answers will be revealed but no, it wasn't! So much for finding out the answers to that ever complex series.

What I am looking forward to this week is watching Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End in the cinema this Wednesday together with the rest of my mates.


I was surprised that I managed to get tickets last night for the screening at GSC 1 Utama. Hip hip hooray for GSC's E-ticketing service! Always a loyal customer of that service, buying tickets at the very convenience of my home.

And right after the movie, there is the match of the year, the Champions League finals between Liverpool and AC Milan! Come one Reds!

Another thing which I am really looking forward to is the upcoming release of Starcraft 2. Well it isn't coming anytime soon with rumours saying that the Beta version is only coming out at the end of the year.


Recently announced last week, the hype has started and Blizzard would be trying to fill a pretty large pair of shoes that is Starcraft which has become sort of an icon in terms of RTS gaming. So much so, the screenshots of the in-game graphics weren't exactly that appealing to me because it looks pretty much the same and I was hoping for some uber graphics since technology has advanced pretty much but I guess it is Blizzard's style to concentrate on game play rather than graphics intensive games.

Of course there are other things which I am looking forward to at the moment, such as eating chicken rice for lunch together with my colleagues and collecting my guitar back from the Acoustic Shack. I really hope that it wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg to get it fixed (apparently my guitar's neck has warped a little and I was quoted about RM120 to have it fixed back). Oh well, it better sound good when I get it back. I really miss playing with it after two weeks of not having it around.

Morning ramblings

Quick update:
I just realised that the biggest match of the year is coming up. Come on Reds, its about time we showed Milan that we have the better team and that the last match was not a fluke in Istanbul.

The weather this morning was absolutely superb, a light drizzle, a cool breeze and a wet road for me to drive through. Definitely one that made me think three times about getting out of bed and getting ready for work. Thanks to the rain, getting up was the most difficult task for me this morning.

My usual morning routine would be to get up, get changed, pack my things and drink my juice (some funny blend of carrots, celery and apple?), today I totally forgot to drink my juice and I opted to stop by McDonald's for a hash brown (130 calories!) to munch on. I even stopped by the Shell petrol kiosk to grab a tin of Nescafe before heading off to the Damansara toll.

Traffic on the Elite was pretty smooth, it would really take a lot to slow it down (well it was rather heavy but once I passed the Subang exit, everything was completely smooth sailing). Also I happened chance upon a post on Gracey's blog and thought I would give it a go as well. Results are as shown below, not an entirely accurate survey because how in the world would a program would know how my soul really looks like if they only have 5 questions to answer!

What Your Soul Really Looks Like

You are a warm hearted and open minded person. It's easy for you to forgive and forget. You are a very grounded, responsible, and realistic person. People may not want to hear the truth from you, but they're going to get it. You see yourself with pretty objective eyes. How you view yourself is almost exactly how other people view you. Your near future is likely to be filled with great successes and accomplishments. You just need to figure out how to get there. For you, love is all about caring and comfort. You couldn't fall in love with someone you didn't trust.

Inside the Room of Your Soul

But since it says nice things about me, I believe it :P

Pre-U Getaway Photos

I've finally decided to sit down and learn how to edit photos using some online tutorials which I did find pretty useful as well as my stack of Digital Camera Malaysia magazines. Proved to be quite useful or maybe my pictures could do with a little bit more work in terms of post processing.

Anyway, J-mes has been commenting or asking me where the photos are so here are some of them which I picked randomly from the entire collection of photos I took in the period of about 6 hours. Since I drove there alone, I had my new companion in my car to keep me company on the way there.
















Of course I needed some shades as well because the sun was shining directly right into my eyes.
















Also thanks to me being sleep deprived, this is the best thing that could keep me awake as well.























One of the games which was ongoing when I arrived on the scene.
















Winners posing for something, not too sure what :P
















Interesting host I took, trying to get emphasis on the sky. Maybe I could have edited the sky nicer.
















The games organizer getting his just reward
















Chicken little, hoping that the sky doesn't fall on his head.























The super sifus!
















Well these are all the shots which I managed to edit but if you want to see the entire collection (unedited), I've uploaded them into my Picasa Web Album, click on the link below to access it.

Yesterdays by Switchfoot

Lately I have been listening to this song quite a fair bit on my iPod. The lyrics doesn't seem to suit me of course because I haven't lost anyone for that matter but the tune, arrghhh, its playing through my head quite often. So enjoy, "Yesterdays" by Switchfoot.

SWITCHFOOT - Oh! Gravity
"Yesterdays"

Flowers cut and brought inside
Black cars in a single line
Your family in suits and ties
And you're free

The ache I feel inside
Is where the life has left your eyes
I'm alone for our last goodbye
But you're free

I remember you like yesterday, yesterday
I still can't believe you're gone, oh...
I remember you like yesterday, yesterday
And until I'm with you, I'll carry on

Adrift on your ocean floor
I feel weightless, numb, and sore
A part of you in me is torn
And you're free

I woke from a dream last night
I dreamt that you were by my side
Reminding me I still had life
In me

I'll carry on

Every lament is a love song
Yesterday, yesterday
I still can't believe you're gone
So long my friend, so long

p.s. I just realised that this song seems to be a rather sad song and talks about a passing of someone. In any way, the lyrics does not reflect what I feel right now but I just like the tune of the song!

Half a Weekend Away

The weekend sort of flew by for me, considering that I start my weekend on Friday nights with the usual cell group and then leading up all the way to Sunday night. This time, I was stuck with quite a fair bit of work on Friday night causing me to arrive home at about 10pm, only because the office was getting a little stuffy (so much for saving electricity and letting all the employees who work the night shift suffer from a heat stroke!).

In contrast to that, I was of course greeted by my ever cool room (with the air-con turned on of course) and instead of working on some documents, I ended up chilling out instead. A much needed rest from a tiring week. Of course I ended up sleeping quite late on Friday night but with the fact that I could sleep in on Saturday morning.

That led to me waking up super late on Saturday itself; almost close to 12pm but I welcomed the much needed sleep. My plan was to head over to Malaysian Theology Seminary or STM to check out the Pre-U Getaway which started on Friday itself.

Well thanks to me waking up late and running a couple of errands in the afternoon (lunch, buying lunch for my sis, checking out Canaanland for my mum, buying tickets online for the Sarawak Rain Forest Festival), I finally left my place at about 3.30pm and headed towards USJ where I decided to drop my guitar off for de-humidifying at the Acoustic Shack.

After dropping that off, I decided to take an easy and comfortable drive towards Senawang which ended up me being lost trying to find out where in the world the place was. 10 minutes of senseless driving about figuring out that I am definitely going the wrong way, I decided to retrace my route and finally found a small road leading towards the seminary.

Armed with my Nikon D40 with a standard kit lens, a 70-300mm lens and my 50mm F1.8 lens, I went ahead and started snapping shots when the happy campers were playing their tele-match games. Not often do I get to actually take shots of events and I guess it is good practice for me. Unfortunately I do not have any of the photo's yet because Grace borrowed my camera from me to use at a wedding she is attending.

Once I get it back from her, I will definitely post those pictures up. So I stayed in Senawang till about 12am, waiting for uncle and aunty to finish their extremely interesting session on relationships. Of course not without practicing to take some indoor pictures under fluorescent light with the 50mm lens without the use of a flash. I do hope that the pictures turn out well, still managed to shoot most of the shots at 1/60 shutter speed.

The drive back was good, I kept to the speed limit as well as had company so it didn't feel at all lonely and quiet. Took me about an hour to reach back home and traffic was quite smooth along the highway.

Sunday on the other hand was a relaxing day with the usual McGarage in the morning followed by 2nd celebration and then lunch, the sun was searing hot and even in my air-conditioned room, I couldn't take a short nap. So much for my plan to go for a 7km run, I was just too stoned out and irritated that my C&C 3 crashed on me for the 3rd time on the same mission.

Now, I feel the need to do more running because the Pacesetters 15km run is just two weeks away and its a hilly course and I had little training before this. I really need to start tuning my run!

Another Web Album Update

I am finally in the mood to upload all the pictures which I have taken and are just sitting in my PC. I guess with the help of Picasa it has been a breeze to upload my photos to online web albums.

Capturing Malacca

This album contains several photos I took while I was in Malacca during the Chinese New Year Holidays.

Lake Gardens

This album contains several pictures I took while I was at Lake Gardens in Kuala Lumpur.

Click here to view my entire photo collection.